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This essay represents a modern approach to some of the basic problems of philosophy. From a strictly scientific standpoint the actual proof of the existence of “other minds” has been a difficult, if not an impossible, procedure since a direct knowledge of this is not obtainable by any known method, but the author has maintained the attitude throughout his work “that the more concrete and specific is our understanding of the nature and vital activities of mind, the more possible it becomes to render the existence of other minds capable of proof, and likewise that the more intimate our contacts with other persons the better we are able to know them as minds.”
After a short introduction in which the author reviews the philosophic situation and presents his own position, he devotes the first chapter to a description of several mental characteristics such as the association of the mind with the body, consciousness, mental process, emotions, elasticity and other neotic properties. The mind is defined as being a “substantial self, in so far as it lives through a conscious history, normally with a conception of itself as having a body, purposes, and objective causes with which it is intimately allied.” This chapter offers one a viewpoint which must be closely followed in order to understand the arguments offered in succeeding chapters.
The arguments for and against reasoning by analogy in this field are fairly well outlined with comments and pronouncements of historical significance by the older as well as by contemporary philosophers, and the